RADIO – ART DECO – INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
The untold story of famous industrial designers who used new materials and mass production in the 1930s and 1940s to create beautiful coloured streamlined radios, starting a trend that brought modern Art Deco styling into homes all around the world
PLUS
A sumptuous photographic display of 350 of the most beautiful radios ever made
New York Art Deco Society Book Launch
Sep 18th 2014 Dominican Academy New York
DECO RADIO
- Reveals for the first time the major influence of Art Deco and Industrial Design on the evolution of radio styling in the 1930s and 1940s, showing radio of the time as much more than just a communication device
- Highlights a small subset of table-top valve radios radios which were mass produced with new synthetic plastics and marketed as a decorative object as well as a functional domestic appliance.
- Identifies 35 industrial designers (including all the famous originators of Streamlining such as Loewy, Bel Geddes, Teague, Coates & Chermayeff) who used new materials such as bakelite and catalin to create stylish small radios in the 1930s and 1940s.
- Explores the worldwide spread of the mantel radio, which not only brought color into homes in the USA and Australia in the 1930s, but changed the listener from the family to the individual
- Confirms these radios as symbols of the machine-age and a new future during times of political turmoil and financial crises that, linked with their rich design heritage, deserve to be seen as important icons in the history of Art Deco and Industrial Design.
- Is the first book to bring together from 15 countries, and displayed with superb photography, some 350 of the best, the rarest and the most beautiful radios ever made.
- Will be a seminal reference for radio collectors worldwide and an original supplement to the scholarship on Art Deco and Industrial Design
